- Pronouns
- He/Him
Slimy_Froggy
Patron
- = { Nid Arach } = -
One. Last. Message.
Written in the style of H.P. Lovecraft
At this point in time, I am uncertain as to what is reality and what are figments of mine own imagination. It cannot possibly have happened. Even if I did tell others of my experiences, I would be ridiculed and become the laughing stock of the town. But I cannot write it all off as a dream, not with a clear conscience, anyway. It would be an insult to my most revered uncle, who unfortunately did not return after our visit to the guardhouse. Its proximity to a castle that once enveloped great evil must be made clear, since that evil was what at some point had been called 'Nid Arach.' I have held this information to myself for a long time, yet now, I must finally relate this most awful experience with you, for the nightmares increase in intensity and sharing this information may just prove to bring some measure of relief.
Many a book can tell you of the queer spiderlike castle 'Nid Arach' and its histories. I, myself, have never been part of such adventurous authors, but the grotesque and macabre has always had my fascination. There is something mysterious in our world that goes unnoticed beyond our senses. Worlds of other dimensions and subatomic interactions exist simultaneously with the three dimensions we inhabit. There are other things that live in their dimensions and sometimes one of theirs overlaps with one of ours. These wicked, in the point of view of humans, creatures are the subject of my research. Their rareness and subscribed powers often allows them to go unnoticed, for what but a madman's ravings would describe these unnameable unwholesome things? And who would risk their social standing and say they believe what the madman has to say?
At the time of the incident I am about to relate to you, Nid Arach was no more than a field of broken bricks. House Ivanov had flattened it entirely and Men of good standing had done a thorough search of the hitherto inaccessible and queer area around Nid Arach. They had found it thoroughly empty. What's more, the 'presence' that many people reportedly felt when they travelled near the area had gone. They examined the stones, searched for possible cave entrances -which they collapsed when they discovered any- and found no trace of the evil that had once been.
This was a year ago.
The first mentions of an underlying evil in the guardhouse reached my ears in the winter of that year. The guardhouse, located a stone's throw away from what's left of Nid Arach, had fallen into disrepair. It was erected in an effort to keep watch on -and contain- whatever walked, crawled, or otherwise used forms of locomotion to escape the vile castle ruins. Since the area was deemed safe once more, the guardhouse no longer served any purpose and the guards had left their posts. A fragment of a conversation lead me to look further into this mundane structure. I overheard a traveller speaking of unidentifiable shapes in the grass near the aforementioned building and a putrid stench. What's more, he relayed -in hushed tones in fear of ridicule- to have felt like he was being watched. His friend wrote it off as a cause of the recent stormy weather and the end of winter. But me, being reminded instantly of the tales of a 'presence' in the region, quickly got in touch with my uncle.
My uncle had in his life achieved greatness among his peers. Well known Darius Whittle had discovered a type of acid that had the most peculiar properties. He baffled the likes of Mary Goldweather, famed alchemist, and Chase Broth, no less! Just how he had whipped up the queer elixir, he kept entirely to himself. The properties were as such: Anyone could handle it without fear of burning, but when it touched things of fouler persuasion such as swamp tar, newt essence, and other manners of witchcraft, it immediately burnt them in their entirety, leaving no trace but a puff of purple smoke. In fact, the acid did pass through human flesh, but came out harmlessly on the other side of a cupped hand. You might know this elixir as Fixall, the name my uncle Darius Whittle had given (it to great effect on the market). Fixall has been used as a remedy to unexplainable illnesses ever since.
I met with the esteemed Whittle -now having reached the respectable age of eighty-three years- in the tavern where I had overheard the travellers talk. He arrived with an abnormally large trunk in his hand and soon sat down at my table. I was torn between trusting in his kinship and the possibility that his genius mind would ridicule my smaller mind for putting stock in such silly tales. I was relieved to discover he was instead most eager to hear more. I related all that I knew and all that I guessed at, even mentioning those dimension theories which he always wholeheartedly approved of. Being a man of great wealth due to his elixir's success, he immediately arranged for a comfortable cart to drive us to the guardhouse.
On our way there, we made plans on how best to approach this 'entity' as we had come to call it for lack of a better name. My uncle had no doubt that the nature of the traveller's sightings were not just part of the weather, but caused by a peculiar and yet to be identified creature of sorts. As we drove through a patch of deserted countryside, I remembered the time that my uncle revealed the secret of his acidic Fixall elixir. He described the cause of its properties as interdimensional. We can see it, but we can't feel it pass through our skin nor does it have any apparent smell. That is because the elixir existed not only in our plane of existence, but in that of another undiscovered dimension in which things lived, like we lived in ours. He would never be persuaded to tell me just how he had made it. You see now, why his name was the first that came to mind. If I was to research and possibly combat a presence of otherworldly proportions, I needed otherworldly tools.
We arrived at the guardhouse in the late afternoon. Decrepit would be a light description of the ghastly state it was in. Mould covered the wooden beams of the doorframe, unwholesome looking moss grew from the cracks in the brickwork and the stench of the place must have doubled since the traveller had visited. It was the most singular putrid smell I had ever encountered and reeked of unnatural decay. Darius reminded me with a start that he had read accounts of people who had been at Nid Arach and had described the smell of that place in a much similar manner! Though this piece of information did not scare us off. Instead, it created a bigger sense of curiosity.
We had little time left, for dusk was nearly upon us and a hint of the creeping sensation of a 'presence' grew ever more in intensity. The grass was disturbed, but it was unclear whether this had been a mundane animal or the effects of an otherworldly presence. We did make a note in our research of the uncanny speed at which the guardhouse had fallen into ruin, however. The rate of decay was something that could not be explained in the way that the grass had been. Then we approached the mouldy doorway. Using a magnifying glass we were able to compare the mould with those species depicted in the books my uncle had brought. We turned page after page and even double-checked, but to no avail. This mould was not known to mankind, which was another ill omen that should've caused us to abolish our research and vacate the place at once. Yet, our sense of wonder pulled us forward. A curiosity only found in the able minds of scientists.
Dusk fell and we debated whether we ought to leave the site for today and return in the morning. The esteemed Whittle had a rather maniacal glint in his eye and was eager to continue. He persuaded me when he said the new type of mould might be only one of the many things we may yet discover and give a scientific name to. We could put ourselves into the tomes of history today! Knowing that we were likely to work late into the night and would be needing every bit of our attention, I drank from the coffee that the trunk of Darius provided, but immediately spit it out. The drink had become disgustingly viscous! Another possible effect of the interdimensional forces at play here, according to my uncle.
As we entered the building, my uncle took out a torch to light the dim moss-lined walls. The guardhouse consisted of one large room with many small panelled windows, all of which had been broken by vandals or the unnaturally speedy decay of the site itself. Whenever Darius held the flame close to the moss, the queer plant seemed to subtract itself away from the flame. While he was busy looking at the walls, I set up a meagre camp with the little facilities that were left in my revered uncle's trunk. That was the first moment I truly and assuredly felt a presence other than our own in that room. My heart was beating fast and my hands were shaking. I called out to my uncle who seemed to have had the same experience. Then, the sense of a looming presence faded away. We were too excited to sleep and wished to press on with the research now that the seeming danger had disappeared, but the old man's legs had finally given out and he had to take a seat to rest his crooked knees. We used this time to calm down and note our findings in our logbooks. In truth, I couldn't sleep nor calm down at all because of some animalistic instinct inside of me that told me to run.
Slowly, nearly imperceivable, the stench of the place increased further in intensity. While my uncle sat on the folded stool he had brought in his seemingly bottomless trunk, I took his torch and continued to observe the moss. Presently, I observed them blooming with the uttermost unwholesome flowers, now extruded a ghastly putrid purple fog. I turned around to tell Darius of my findings, only to find him laying on the ground, as if fallen from his overturned stool. Finally, my fear had overtaken me. I rushed towards him and called out his name, but his face was reactionless and his eyes were closed. It was not a peaceful sleep, for he moaned and turned, a frightened emotion on his face.
I was unable to wake him and dared not shake his frail body too hard in fear of bruising or breaking the old man's bones. The putrid stench became overwhelming and the presence returned with force. I fainted. Images flashing before my eyes that I cannot possibly describe in full with the limited words we use to describe our senses. Textures weaving into impossible shapes, sounds that were not sounds but were instead distances, and all the while a suffocating feeling took a hold of me. The visions had meaning beyond my faculty to describe, but I remember comprehending things I had never known existed. I fought to leave this place of misshapen reality. When I woke, all I had were memories that felt like the experiences of a lifetime, but the specifics were missing.
I sat back up and quickly noticed an absence. My uncle Darius was gone! Next to his overturned chair, where he had lain before I fell into the dreamworld, was a thick patch of the odd moss that lined the brick walls. Understanding immediately that the malign entity in the guardhouse had taken my uncle from our dimensions into his own, I wept loudly and fumbled at the moss, hoping to find a trace of him. A most singular moment transpired then, which caused me to bolt upright. I could sincerely feel that I was not alone. But the presence I felt wasn't the comforting support of my aged uncle, but a malicious and indescribably otherworldly one. The creature had come to finish the job and take me too! The strength of my youth had caused me to withstand the abomination's assault where Darius had succumbed. But I felt weaker now. More vulnerable indeed.
That is when I saw Whittle's open trunk laying on the floor, a gallon of Fixall sticking out of it. As I felt the suffocating presence closing in on my senses, I assumed a running stance and grabbed the bottle. My sight was getting narrower and I felt a blackness encroach upon my senses, but I uncorked the bottle and threw a splash of the interdimensional acid upon the mossy wall. Immediately, my senses came back to me. I looked at the wet splash on the wall and saw it was barren and entirely devoid of moss. In a frenzy I continued to splash the substance all over the walls and lastly upon the spot where my uncle had lain. When I was done and all the moss had been cleaned, the presence had fully disappeared too. The stench, the mould, and the stains on the grass had all gone.
It was as if nothing had ever happened. While I was breathing laboriously from my exertion, I already started to doubt the reality of what I had just experienced and witnessed. Could I have fallen asleep and dreamt it all? But then, how can I explain the large trunk at my feet, the bottle in my hand, and the overturned chair with extinguished torch on the floor? Some of this experience must've been real, but the line between reality and my dreams has faded and I am haunted by nightmares of monstrous shapes and malign forces day and night. I know one thing for sure, whatever it was we experienced that night that took my uncle, it was otherworldly!
One. Last. Message.
Written in the style of H.P. Lovecraft
At this point in time, I am uncertain as to what is reality and what are figments of mine own imagination. It cannot possibly have happened. Even if I did tell others of my experiences, I would be ridiculed and become the laughing stock of the town. But I cannot write it all off as a dream, not with a clear conscience, anyway. It would be an insult to my most revered uncle, who unfortunately did not return after our visit to the guardhouse. Its proximity to a castle that once enveloped great evil must be made clear, since that evil was what at some point had been called 'Nid Arach.' I have held this information to myself for a long time, yet now, I must finally relate this most awful experience with you, for the nightmares increase in intensity and sharing this information may just prove to bring some measure of relief.
Many a book can tell you of the queer spiderlike castle 'Nid Arach' and its histories. I, myself, have never been part of such adventurous authors, but the grotesque and macabre has always had my fascination. There is something mysterious in our world that goes unnoticed beyond our senses. Worlds of other dimensions and subatomic interactions exist simultaneously with the three dimensions we inhabit. There are other things that live in their dimensions and sometimes one of theirs overlaps with one of ours. These wicked, in the point of view of humans, creatures are the subject of my research. Their rareness and subscribed powers often allows them to go unnoticed, for what but a madman's ravings would describe these unnameable unwholesome things? And who would risk their social standing and say they believe what the madman has to say?
At the time of the incident I am about to relate to you, Nid Arach was no more than a field of broken bricks. House Ivanov had flattened it entirely and Men of good standing had done a thorough search of the hitherto inaccessible and queer area around Nid Arach. They had found it thoroughly empty. What's more, the 'presence' that many people reportedly felt when they travelled near the area had gone. They examined the stones, searched for possible cave entrances -which they collapsed when they discovered any- and found no trace of the evil that had once been.
This was a year ago.
The first mentions of an underlying evil in the guardhouse reached my ears in the winter of that year. The guardhouse, located a stone's throw away from what's left of Nid Arach, had fallen into disrepair. It was erected in an effort to keep watch on -and contain- whatever walked, crawled, or otherwise used forms of locomotion to escape the vile castle ruins. Since the area was deemed safe once more, the guardhouse no longer served any purpose and the guards had left their posts. A fragment of a conversation lead me to look further into this mundane structure. I overheard a traveller speaking of unidentifiable shapes in the grass near the aforementioned building and a putrid stench. What's more, he relayed -in hushed tones in fear of ridicule- to have felt like he was being watched. His friend wrote it off as a cause of the recent stormy weather and the end of winter. But me, being reminded instantly of the tales of a 'presence' in the region, quickly got in touch with my uncle.
My uncle had in his life achieved greatness among his peers. Well known Darius Whittle had discovered a type of acid that had the most peculiar properties. He baffled the likes of Mary Goldweather, famed alchemist, and Chase Broth, no less! Just how he had whipped up the queer elixir, he kept entirely to himself. The properties were as such: Anyone could handle it without fear of burning, but when it touched things of fouler persuasion such as swamp tar, newt essence, and other manners of witchcraft, it immediately burnt them in their entirety, leaving no trace but a puff of purple smoke. In fact, the acid did pass through human flesh, but came out harmlessly on the other side of a cupped hand. You might know this elixir as Fixall, the name my uncle Darius Whittle had given (it to great effect on the market). Fixall has been used as a remedy to unexplainable illnesses ever since.
I met with the esteemed Whittle -now having reached the respectable age of eighty-three years- in the tavern where I had overheard the travellers talk. He arrived with an abnormally large trunk in his hand and soon sat down at my table. I was torn between trusting in his kinship and the possibility that his genius mind would ridicule my smaller mind for putting stock in such silly tales. I was relieved to discover he was instead most eager to hear more. I related all that I knew and all that I guessed at, even mentioning those dimension theories which he always wholeheartedly approved of. Being a man of great wealth due to his elixir's success, he immediately arranged for a comfortable cart to drive us to the guardhouse.
On our way there, we made plans on how best to approach this 'entity' as we had come to call it for lack of a better name. My uncle had no doubt that the nature of the traveller's sightings were not just part of the weather, but caused by a peculiar and yet to be identified creature of sorts. As we drove through a patch of deserted countryside, I remembered the time that my uncle revealed the secret of his acidic Fixall elixir. He described the cause of its properties as interdimensional. We can see it, but we can't feel it pass through our skin nor does it have any apparent smell. That is because the elixir existed not only in our plane of existence, but in that of another undiscovered dimension in which things lived, like we lived in ours. He would never be persuaded to tell me just how he had made it. You see now, why his name was the first that came to mind. If I was to research and possibly combat a presence of otherworldly proportions, I needed otherworldly tools.
We arrived at the guardhouse in the late afternoon. Decrepit would be a light description of the ghastly state it was in. Mould covered the wooden beams of the doorframe, unwholesome looking moss grew from the cracks in the brickwork and the stench of the place must have doubled since the traveller had visited. It was the most singular putrid smell I had ever encountered and reeked of unnatural decay. Darius reminded me with a start that he had read accounts of people who had been at Nid Arach and had described the smell of that place in a much similar manner! Though this piece of information did not scare us off. Instead, it created a bigger sense of curiosity.
We had little time left, for dusk was nearly upon us and a hint of the creeping sensation of a 'presence' grew ever more in intensity. The grass was disturbed, but it was unclear whether this had been a mundane animal or the effects of an otherworldly presence. We did make a note in our research of the uncanny speed at which the guardhouse had fallen into ruin, however. The rate of decay was something that could not be explained in the way that the grass had been. Then we approached the mouldy doorway. Using a magnifying glass we were able to compare the mould with those species depicted in the books my uncle had brought. We turned page after page and even double-checked, but to no avail. This mould was not known to mankind, which was another ill omen that should've caused us to abolish our research and vacate the place at once. Yet, our sense of wonder pulled us forward. A curiosity only found in the able minds of scientists.
Dusk fell and we debated whether we ought to leave the site for today and return in the morning. The esteemed Whittle had a rather maniacal glint in his eye and was eager to continue. He persuaded me when he said the new type of mould might be only one of the many things we may yet discover and give a scientific name to. We could put ourselves into the tomes of history today! Knowing that we were likely to work late into the night and would be needing every bit of our attention, I drank from the coffee that the trunk of Darius provided, but immediately spit it out. The drink had become disgustingly viscous! Another possible effect of the interdimensional forces at play here, according to my uncle.
As we entered the building, my uncle took out a torch to light the dim moss-lined walls. The guardhouse consisted of one large room with many small panelled windows, all of which had been broken by vandals or the unnaturally speedy decay of the site itself. Whenever Darius held the flame close to the moss, the queer plant seemed to subtract itself away from the flame. While he was busy looking at the walls, I set up a meagre camp with the little facilities that were left in my revered uncle's trunk. That was the first moment I truly and assuredly felt a presence other than our own in that room. My heart was beating fast and my hands were shaking. I called out to my uncle who seemed to have had the same experience. Then, the sense of a looming presence faded away. We were too excited to sleep and wished to press on with the research now that the seeming danger had disappeared, but the old man's legs had finally given out and he had to take a seat to rest his crooked knees. We used this time to calm down and note our findings in our logbooks. In truth, I couldn't sleep nor calm down at all because of some animalistic instinct inside of me that told me to run.
Slowly, nearly imperceivable, the stench of the place increased further in intensity. While my uncle sat on the folded stool he had brought in his seemingly bottomless trunk, I took his torch and continued to observe the moss. Presently, I observed them blooming with the uttermost unwholesome flowers, now extruded a ghastly putrid purple fog. I turned around to tell Darius of my findings, only to find him laying on the ground, as if fallen from his overturned stool. Finally, my fear had overtaken me. I rushed towards him and called out his name, but his face was reactionless and his eyes were closed. It was not a peaceful sleep, for he moaned and turned, a frightened emotion on his face.
I was unable to wake him and dared not shake his frail body too hard in fear of bruising or breaking the old man's bones. The putrid stench became overwhelming and the presence returned with force. I fainted. Images flashing before my eyes that I cannot possibly describe in full with the limited words we use to describe our senses. Textures weaving into impossible shapes, sounds that were not sounds but were instead distances, and all the while a suffocating feeling took a hold of me. The visions had meaning beyond my faculty to describe, but I remember comprehending things I had never known existed. I fought to leave this place of misshapen reality. When I woke, all I had were memories that felt like the experiences of a lifetime, but the specifics were missing.
I sat back up and quickly noticed an absence. My uncle Darius was gone! Next to his overturned chair, where he had lain before I fell into the dreamworld, was a thick patch of the odd moss that lined the brick walls. Understanding immediately that the malign entity in the guardhouse had taken my uncle from our dimensions into his own, I wept loudly and fumbled at the moss, hoping to find a trace of him. A most singular moment transpired then, which caused me to bolt upright. I could sincerely feel that I was not alone. But the presence I felt wasn't the comforting support of my aged uncle, but a malicious and indescribably otherworldly one. The creature had come to finish the job and take me too! The strength of my youth had caused me to withstand the abomination's assault where Darius had succumbed. But I felt weaker now. More vulnerable indeed.
That is when I saw Whittle's open trunk laying on the floor, a gallon of Fixall sticking out of it. As I felt the suffocating presence closing in on my senses, I assumed a running stance and grabbed the bottle. My sight was getting narrower and I felt a blackness encroach upon my senses, but I uncorked the bottle and threw a splash of the interdimensional acid upon the mossy wall. Immediately, my senses came back to me. I looked at the wet splash on the wall and saw it was barren and entirely devoid of moss. In a frenzy I continued to splash the substance all over the walls and lastly upon the spot where my uncle had lain. When I was done and all the moss had been cleaned, the presence had fully disappeared too. The stench, the mould, and the stains on the grass had all gone.
It was as if nothing had ever happened. While I was breathing laboriously from my exertion, I already started to doubt the reality of what I had just experienced and witnessed. Could I have fallen asleep and dreamt it all? But then, how can I explain the large trunk at my feet, the bottle in my hand, and the overturned chair with extinguished torch on the floor? Some of this experience must've been real, but the line between reality and my dreams has faded and I am haunted by nightmares of monstrous shapes and malign forces day and night. I know one thing for sure, whatever it was we experienced that night that took my uncle, it was otherworldly!